joined me earlier this morning to talk about this attempt and his new book called "ingenuoustron am r "mousetronaut." >> what do you think of felix baumgartner's attempt? >> a lot of risk. he's going to jump out of a capsule from the edges of space. but, you know, if he's got a good engineering team and his suit works and, you know, as he hits the atmosphere, if he can with stand those forces and then finally the chute opens he should be okay. i'm optimistic. i think he can do that. >> there's a lot of ifs. if a good team, if the suit works, if the chute opens. is there any kind of a risk that you would ever take? >> well, certainly flying in a space shuttle as an enormous amount of risk. i don't no statistically what the risk there is. space shut simple a risky proposition to fly. we send guys out to do spak walks routinely and that's a similar thing to what you're looking at there with the exception he's his own re-entry vehicle. that's pretty hazardous. >> is there a scientific benefit to this? >> yeah, perhaps. maybe he has new technology in that suit to handle those force of re-e